This invention relates to the field of teaching aids, and is more particularly directed to a portable, self-powered teaching device which is radio-controlled and which stimulates student attentiveness during oral reading of textual material, as well as presenting extemporaneous testing and programmed instruction.
For many years a significant classroom problem has revolved around maintaining student alertness during oral reading where the student-teacher ratio may be on the order of 30 to 1 or higher. While one student is involved in oral reading, there are twenty-nine or more onlookers who should be silently following along in their textbooks, but may or may not be intent on the material being read. As any teacher can attest, more than a few students will be engaged in sleeping, daydreaming, passing notes, doodling, chatting with a neighbor, throwing spitballs, or much worse. The usual gambit used by the teacher in this situation is to dismiss the student who is reading and immediately call upon one of the miscreants to take his place. If class attention is still not up to par at this stage, the teacher subsequently calls on others in need of mentally joining the academic group. Sometimes the above stratagem is successful in snapping all members of the class to attention; other times the effort simply detracts from the lesson at hand. In the latter case, the teacher may decide to halt all oral reading and test the class to determine just how much of the lesson was learned, either directly or by osmosis. Unfortunately, however, few teachers look forward to correcting thirty or more test papers, and often eschew the "exchanging of papers" for student correction because of the mistakes, favoritism, and downright bickering it can create.
To mitigate these problems, a teaching device is provided which furnishes each student with a "receiver" at his desk, so that he or she can silently respond throughout an oral reading lesson or to a group test administered by the teacher. Since the teaching device requires no modification of reading materials and no teacher correction of test papers, the device can be freely used to stimulate student attentiveness during various portions of the classroom day. If desired, the teaching device can also present programmed instruction to an individual student, a small group of students, or to the entire class.
Accordingly, a general object of the present invention is to provide a portable, self-powered, radio-controlled teaching device for each student of a classroom, so that the teacher maintains a high level of student alertness by remaining in radio contact with each and every student during selected periods of the classroom day. A primary object of the present invention is to provide a teaching device which electronically transmits teacher-selected data to each student of a classroom, and which, in turn, requires individual student responses to the data without the necessity of wired connections between the teacher and students. Another object of the present invention is to provide a teaching device which is used to instantly and extemporaneously test the class on a selected subject area without the necessity for teacher-prepared examination papers and teacher or student correction of these papers. A further object of the present invention is to provide a teaching device which presents programmed instruction to an individual student, a group of students, or the entire class. Additional advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description of a preferred embodiment of the invention.
A preferred embodiment of the present invention provides a portable, self-powered, radio-controlled teaching device comprising a teacher transmitter unit and a plurality of student receiver units, one for each member of a classroom to use at his or her desk. The teaching device is operated when textual material is being read aloud by the teacher or a student while other class members follow along silently in their copies of the text. Each time the teacher depresses a switch provided on the front of the transmitter housing, a tone of preselected frequency is silently transmitted to all of the student receivers. The transmitter unit also contains a digital readout displaying the total number of times the above tone switch has been depressed by the teacher.
Each student receiver unit contains a tone decoder, a dual digital readout displaying the total "right" and "wrong" responses, and a response switch which is depressed immediately following certain designated portions of the text being read aloud. For example, if the teacher wanted to stress transitive verbs during a lesson, he would instruct the students to immediately depress their response switches each time a transitive verb was read in the textual material. The teacher, of course, depresses the tone switch on his teacher transmitter exactly when a transitive verb is being read, so that a tone is transmitted and detected at that exact point by all student receivers. Logic circuitry within the student units causes a "right" display to increase one count, if a student response switch has been depressed at the proper time; if the response switch is not depressed at the correct time, logic circuitry causes a "wrong" display to advance one count. Thus, the dual digital display in each receiver unit allows the teacher to score each student at the end of the lesson. The teacher may or may not elect to take scores; the students won't know until the lesson has been completed. Since each student must carefully follow along in his text as the oral reading progresses, his level of attentiveness must remain high in order to earn a high "right" score. A perfect score will be equal to the number displayed on the teacher transmitter unit at the end of a lesson. Most teachers will subtract the number "wrong" from the number "right" to discourage student guessing.
A particular application of the radio-controlled teaching device depends to a great extent upon the ingenuity and imagination of the teacher using it. In a phonics lesson, for example, the teacher may require that the student response switch be depressed when the student hears the sound "e." In a music lesson (using an orchestral recording this time), the student responds when he first hears, for example, the "woodwind section". In a foreign language lesson, the student responds when, for example, the French word being read means "without." In a science lesson, the student responds when, for example, the compound mentioned in the text is a "hydroxide." In a history lesson, the student responds when, for example, the state mentioned was a member of the "Southern Confederacy," etc. If the teacher does not want to stress any particular point within a given portion of text, but simply wants to maintain attentiveness, he can instruct his students to depress their response switches at the end of each line, sentence, or paragraph.
The radio-controlled teaching device is also used to administer "true or false" and "multiple-choice" tests. Following the reading of a short story, the teacher may, for example, require that the students respond to: "Patty rode her bike to (a) the store, (b) Betty's house, or (c) her father's office."
In addition to testing, the radio-controlled teaching device is used to present programmed instruction in a similar manner, except the lesson is reproduced by a plural-channel tape player with the audio portion recorded on a first channel and the tones recorded on a second channel. The audio channel is presented via headphones or a small loudspeaker, depending on whether the programmed lesson is administered to one student, a small group of students, or to the entire class. The teacher transmitter unit contains recording and playback logic and interface jacks so the teacher can utilize a plural-channel (stereo) recorder to prepare his own programmed lessons. Commercially programmed lessons can also be used.